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There is no reason why you cant use both solid poly with emitters and dripline. Spacing on drip is 12 or 18 or 24 and you can mix it also. Drip is very flexiable once you figure out the start point and length of each run. Hint*** filter each run and install a flush end. Purchase all the poly and connectors from the same manafucturer and use emitters that best suit what you want.

Now another question related to fittings. Rainbird offers two types of fittings to use with their dripline; XF Insert (barbed) fittings and Easy Fit Compression. Anyone have any experience using either of these two and if so, which ones do you prefer?

Help with Drip-System Design

My backyard has shrubbery planted around the entire perimeter and next to the house with 2 spray zones used to water everything. The shrubs have grown to the point that many of the spray heads only water one bush/tree instead of the intended 4-5. Most of the plants have matured to the point where I don't think extending, adding, and repositioning spray heads to get good coverage is the way to go. Thus, I think I want to convert these zones to drip zones.

I have about 130 plants with a wide range of water requirements. In my yard I have: base plants that are trees (crape merytl, cherry laurel, arborvitae); flowering shrubs (gardena, azalea's); non-flowering (box wood, dwarf youpons, indian hawthorn, nandina); and flowers. Most of the base plant are evenly spaced about 4 feet apart. Everything else is ramdomly spaced. With all this, in my mind, it seems simple enough to just snake a drip tube around the plants.

As far as drip goes, I've got two options: 1) use blank drip distribution tubing and insert drip emitters at each plant or 2) use drip tubing with inline emitters. If I decide to go the blank drip tubing/insert drip emitters route, I estimated I will need about 300 emitters (various number of emitters and precipitation rates for each type of plant). That's seems like a lot emitter inserting. If I go the inline emitter route I may have situations where I may not get proper water distribution. However, they way things are now, 60% of the plants don't get any water.